The dynamic the kids have when putting all things aside and just being creative is completely different than the Punch Buggy game. In theory, they could argue that the car isn’t really a car, because it doesn’t really look like a car, and the door isn’t a door at all, and that it really should be used for a window. But they don’t. They just create. They don’t criticize. They don’t try and convince each other that the other person is wrong. They don’t make assumptions about what the other person’s intentions were, or how they are feeling. They just create. They encourage, they discuss, and they create.

Disappointing a few customers who like a pun is not the same as being respectful of your customer base at large and the issues that face women everywhere….The context doesn’t obscure or render it neutral and harmless.

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It was those very numbers that made me start to look at the breakdown of the applicant pool, in terms of the ratio of male to female, and the discovery of what was, I think, an over-emphasis on grade point average.

Normally we hear words like this when we’re talking about low female enrollment, but in the case of medicine, it seems that meritocracy is failing the men.

[Some] universities across [Canada] have been tinkering with admissions to boost the number of men in medical school – looking beyond marks to give male applicants, in particular, credit for things like community service.
[…]
While women apply to medical school in record numbers – and make up nearly 60 per cent of students admitted – men still stand a better chance of being accepted in every province but three, according to data from the entering class of 2007. They were Alberta, Quebec and Prince Edward Island.

The notion of a stealth policy of affirmative action for men is not new. It first surfaced south of the border in 2006. That year, the dean of Kenyon College wrote an op-ed in The New York Times lamenting that she had to pass over “glorious stacks of girls” in favour of less qualified boys in order to keep some semblance of a gender balance at the school. She said the trend is widespread in postsecondary schools in order to keep themselves marketable.

Dr. Cappon says it’s an image issue here too: “If it looks like a woman’s program, you’ll have trouble attracting both men and women.”

What do you think of stealth affirmative action? I’ve definitely had many a bitter male student rant that it’s happening for women in CS, but to be completely honest it’s largely been the less successful students who wouldn’t have made the grade anyhow and just wanted a scapegoat. However, this is the first I’ve heard a public admission of universities doing this sort of thing and I’m curious now if it’s been done for other faculties for any other groups other than men in medicine.

Is affirmative action for men the answer to enrolment woes?: Basing admissions mostly on marks, it seemed, had contributed to the decline of men's numbers in medical schools. Dr. Reiter, who was new to the position, decided the school should put less emphasis on marks and broaden its requirements, which eventually it did. The proportion of men has since slightly increased.

The Fantasy of Girl World: Lady Nerds and Utopias: When we see the word “nerd,” we don’t think of women. We almost can’t… And yet! The girl nerds, they exist! And they tell their own stories… One of the oldest stories is the one where dudes don’t run things. Or, you know, exist. (This is by Sady Doyle, who reclaimss ‘girl’ and ‘lady’. And possibly ‘nerd’?) And dude-free utopias, it turns out, have plenty of social justice problems. Footnotes to the essay are over at Tiger Beatdown.

Regardless of what Sady Doyle thinks, Flowtown and Threadless would like to remind you that nerds are men, dontcha know? Mostly young, mostly white, definitely men.

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